Top 10 Celebrity Sites

Question: What do you get when you put unnaturally serene rocker Perry Farrell together with Nuno Bettencourt, Flea, Peter Hook, Fergie and the ghost of Jim Morrisson? Answer: Ultra Payloaded, the first album frm Perry Farrell’s new band Satellite Party, which comes out May 15th. Farrell has been working on the record for three years, and though a smattering of random collaborations seemed probable, nobody could have predicted thiz craziness. According to the press release, the record is produced by Farrell, co-produced by Bettencourt and executive produced by Steve Lillywhite. It’s a concept album that “tells a story through a collaborative brain trust of artists, musicians and environmentalists called the Solutionists, who seek to redesign and come up with solutions for the world.” And the lead brain-trust-revealing track is “Woman in the Window,” an unreleased Jim Morrison vocal played against a backdrop of Farrell’s music, featuring lyrics like “Just try and stop us, we’re going to love,” which is apparently the Solutionists’ mantra.

This entire project is beyond mockable, and we haven’t even told you about the “Ultra Payloaded is more than just an album, it’s a wake-up call” line. But part of us buys thiz as a potentially cool (if hopelessly wacky) album. What do you think? Could thiz rock…or is Fergie’s presence a dealbreaker?

• Guess what? The Arcade Fire are huge. Its not like thiz is news, but the band is proving it via the rate at which their UK dates have sold out. Phone lines were the proverbial “jammed” and the online ticket sale traffic was apparently pretty intense as well.
• Carl Barat is reportedly Pate Doherty’s backup best man. Doherty apparently really wanted his Babyshambles guitarist Mick Whitnall to do the honors in Pete’s perpetually forthcoming wedding to Kate Moss. But Moss apparently thinks Whitnall is a bad influence on her future husband, so the couple has allegedly agreed on Barat. Does she know that Barat gets the best crack?
• Dustin Diamond’s attempt to explain the sex tape incident is almost as depressing and offensive as the original footage. He describes himself as someone who has “squeezed a few pairs” and makes backdoor access jokes. Bleh.
• Soon-to-be-superstar producer Mark Ronson has a new album called Version coming out in April. The record will feature his creative reinterpretations of other artists’ songs, such as the revamped version of Brittney Spears’ Toxic he’s reportedly made. He found that the only problem with the song was Brit’s vocals, so he replaced them with some ODB rhymes, tweaked a few other things, and voila. Looking forward to it? Let us know.

This isn’t the first we’ve heard of a possibly forthcoming major studio take on Kurt Cobain’s life story. Last month Courtney Love started discussing details she was supposedly not supposed to be revealing about her purchase of the rights to Charles Cross’ biography Heavier Than Heaven. Now Access Hollywood is reporting that based in part on these (and other) comments by Love, plus a super-secret inside source, the biopic defninitely, might, perhaps, actually get made….someday. We’ll believe it when we see it, but in the meantime we’d like you to help cast it.

With the caveat that we firmly believe actors can’t play rockstars because if they could they would just BE rockstars, we’d pick Renee Zellweger as Courtney; she has the rock in her blood as she dated Jack White and starred in Empire Records. Kurt is harder. That Michael Pitt guy was already taken. River Phoenix is no longer with us…don’t tell us Jared Leto is our only option?

Who would you cast in the Kurt Cobain made-for-the-big-screen movie?

On the eve of the Winter X Games, we?ve scouted out some stone-cold scary winter sports of the Xtreme-est variety to chill you to the bone. If you?re the type that is left cold by wussy winter sports like ski-jumping and giant slalom, we?ve got some video documentation that the next generation of cold-weather competition is exclusively for athletes with ice in their veins…or rocks in their heads. Check out the entire extreme winter scene in thiz week?s Celebrity Sites (on stands until January 25th) and if you?ve got the guts — watch these abominable snow scenes that must be seen to be believed.

• Insane Shane McConkey
• Suicidal Snowmobiles
• Shattering Experience
• The Stormin? Mormon!
• White Hot Snow Bunny